The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy

by Robert F Turner

  According to Ms. Adams in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in Paris: “Captain Ramsay is of [the] opinion [that Sally Hemings] will be of so little Service that he had better carry her back with him. But of this you will be a judge.”66 From this, Professor Gordon-Reed attempts to dismiss Captain Ramsay with what can only be called a stereotype:

  Captain Ramsey’s [sic] remedy, that he just take Sally Hemings back to Virginia, suggests that he either was not very thoughtful or was not thinking in a totally disinterested manner about the situation. One wonders at his effrontery, thinking it proper that he decide who would be of no use in Jefferson’s household and that, without consulting Jefferson, he would take Hemings back to Virginia. …

  As Fawn Brodie pointed out, it does not take much imagination to determine why Captain Ramsey [sic] might have been desirous of having the beautiful young girl make the voyage back to the United States with him. Think of “Dashing Sally” on a six-week ocean voyage with Captain Ramsey [sic] and his crew.67

  Like so much of her book, this analysis is premised upon numerous assumptions for which there is not the slightest evidence. Abigail Adams did not say that the Captain was considering taking Sally Hemings back to Virginia without consulting Jefferson; the very purpose of her letter—or at least one of her purposes—seems to have been to convey the captain’s judgment and offer and to seek Jefferson’s wishes in the matter. (Indeed, in a letter to Jefferson dated July 6 Captain Ramsay declared that if Jefferson did not send someone to get Polly, and, presumably, Sally, in “another weeks time,” he would be honored to escort them personally to Paris.68)

  Contrary to Professor Gordon-Reed’s allegation, Captain Ramsay appears by all evidence to be a very “thoughtful” individual. In a May 1787 letter, Anne Blair Banister described Captain Andrew Ramsay as “a very worthy Man,” adding “I am confident from my knowledge of him he will be perfectly attentive to [Polly].”69 If one can get away from the bizarre stereotype that every sea captain was by nature a rapist at heart, every bit of evidence we know about Captain Ramsay is positive. His behavior around Polly seems to have been so loving and gentle that she clung to him as a father figure. Thomas Jefferson and Abigail Adams—two individuals of established good judgment—seemed very impressed with him.70 Surely Abigail Adams was sophisticated enough to take measure of the man and consider alternative motives for his offer. But her eyewitness assessment after ten days of regular exposure to Sally Hemings is simply dismissed—presumably because it greatly undermines the popular mythology about the “dashing” Sally Hemings.

  After leaving Captain Ramsay, Polly and Sally lived with the Adams family in London for three weeks. Ten days into their stay, Abigail Adams wrote to Jefferson again, this time providing her own eyewitness assessment of Sally Hemings: “The girl she [eight-year-old Polly] has with her, wants more care than the child, and is wholly incapable of looking properly after her, without some superiour to direct her.”71 Other than references to Sally being “handsome” or “good looking,” and having “straight hair,” these are the only surviving eyewitness evaluations of Sally Hemings.72 Abigail Adams was one of the most remarkable individuals of her era and a dedicated opponent to slavery, and there is not the slightest reason to believe that her comments about Sally Hemings were designed to do anything more than inform her friend in Paris of the realities she had witnessed. The only apparent reason this highly credible testimony, supported as well by that of Captain Ramsay, has been largely ignored is that it undermines the revisionist image of fourteen- or fifteen-year-old Sally Hemings as a sophisticated, charming, and seductive woman whose remarkable charms Thomas Jefferson was simply incapable of resisting.

  The Mysterious Thomas Hemings

  We now come again to the very mysterious “Tom” upon whom James Callender largely based his 1802 allegations that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children by Sally Hemings. For generations, it has been widely assumed that “Tom” was in reality “Thomas Woodson,” and a powerful oral tradition from various lines of Woodson’s descendants supports this account.

  As already discussed in Chapter One, Professor Gordon-Reed included a lengthy discussion of the pros and cons about “Tom” in the pre-DNA-tests version of her book, noting his critical importance to both sides of the argument and arguing—in my view quite persuasively—that had there been no “Tom,” certainly Jefferson’s friends and supporters would have mentioned that fact in their many responses to Callender. On the contrary, at least one Jefferson defender appears to have conceded the existence of Callender’s “Tom.”73

  For years, the experts at Monticello have conceded that Thomas Woodson was probably the mysterious “Tom” born to Sally Hemings in 1790 after returning from Paris. They did not concede that he was fathered by Thomas Jefferson. There is no record of a slave named “Tom” being born to any of Jefferson’s slaves in 1790 (however, there is a potentially interesting erasure in his Farm Book for that year74). Early that year, Jefferson assumed the post of Secretary of Foreign Affairs (later redesignated Secretary of State when the duties were expanded to include such things as keeping the national seal and issuing commissions to public officers), and he did not carefully maintain his Farm Book between 1783 and 1794 because of his frequent absences.75 But had there been a “Tom,” there should have been subsequent references in Jefferson’s records. If there never was a “Tom” as described by Callender, the Callender allegations become even less credible. If Thomas Woodson was born to Sally Hemings in 1790, the DNA results show conclusively that his father was not a Jefferson. That means either that Sally was not sexually involved with Thomas Jefferson or that she was not monogamous. Again, the circumstantial case against Thomas Jefferson is largely founded upon the assumption that she was monogamous and gave birth to a son named “Tom” shortly after returning from Paris.

  After the DNA reports, Thomas Woodson shifted from being the star witness for the prosecution to being a major impediment to a conviction of Thomas Jefferson. There was nothing in the DNA tests to cast doubt on Woodson’s claim to be the son of Sally Hemings,76 and scholars like Joseph Ellis have managed to reconcile their belief in a Jefferson-Hemings romance without questioning Thomas Woodson’s status as Sally Hemings’ presumptive son. Writing in a 2000 issue of the prestigious William & Mary Quarterly, Professor Ellis reasoned (after asserting that “Jefferson’s paternity of several Hemings children is proven ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’”):

  Whether Jefferson fathered all of Hemings’s children is still unclear. Madison Hemings claimed he did. And since Eston Hemings was born in 1808, when Jefferson was sixty-five years old, it seems highly unlikely that the relationship began and ended at that time. On the other hand, the DNA study produced a nonmatch with Thomas Woodson, the first of Sally’s surviving children. Either Madison Hemings was wrong about the origins of the relationship, or the nonmatch with Thomas Woodson is the result of a “false paternity,” that is, a subsequent break in the genetic line that falsifies the results.77

  This would seem to be a reasonable conclusion, except in this instance there is only the remotest, highly theoretical chance of a “false paternity” result. The initial study reported by Dr. Foster in Nature involved the testing of five male-line descendants of two different sons of Thomas Woodson. Four of these matched, and the fifth was judged a consequence of an illegitimate father somewhere in the line. Since then, yet another Woodson descendant—from a third son of Thomas Woodson—has been tested, with no match to Thomas Jefferson or any other Jefferson male. Occam would not favor concluding that the same illegitimate father, over a period of many years, produced three sons who were generally but wrongly believed to be Thomas Woodson’s, over the simpler conclusion that Thomas Woodson was not fathered by any Jefferson. Even less likely would be the theory that the same man went from family to family fathering the sons of Thomas Woodson’s three sons over a period of years. The “false paternity” option sounds reasonable, but it simply will not wash. Professor Ellis is factually mistak
en when he postulates the option of “a false paternity”—there would have to be at minimum three “subsequent break[s] in the genetic line,” and all of them would have to involve the same illegitimate father. Dr. Ellis is thus left with his first conclusion: that “Madison Hemings was wrong about the origins of the relationship.”

  The Monticello Research Committee seems to have simply decided to resolve the conflict between the Woodson oral history and Dr. Foster’s DNA tests by summarily eliminating Thomas Woodson as one of Sally Hemings’ possible children. After all of their years of interviewing Woodson family descendants in their “Getting Word” oral history project, their January 2000 “Research Findings and Implications” stated: “The DNA evidence indicates that, despite an enduring oral tradition in the Woodson family, Thomas Jefferson was not the father of Thomas C. Woodson. No documents have yet been found to support the belief that Woodson was Sally Hemings’ first child, born soon after her return from France.”78 They might have added that no “documents”79 have been found to support the belief that Sally Hemings had any child in 1790.

  It has gone almost unnoticed that Thomas Woodson’s Y chromosome was not one characteristic of inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa, but rather one common among European males.80 This proves nothing, but it is consistent with a theory that Sally Hemings might have become pregnant in Paris by a man other than Thomas Jefferson, and that Thomas Woodson was born as claimed after she returned to the United States. This is possible, but there are many other equally plausible explanations. It is of no consequence to our inquiry.

  Other Possible Fathers

  Another problem with the Monticello Report and much of the other scholarship supporting a Jefferson-Hemings sexual relationship is the tendency to dismiss other potential fathers. To be sure, the Report admits that there were more than two dozen known81 Jefferson males in Virginia when Eston was conceived who were old enough to father children and carried exactly the same DNA Y chromosome as Thomas Jefferson.82 Since Thomas Jefferson inherited many of his slaves from his father, who in turn had inherited slaves from his father, there is at least some chance that a male Jefferson impregnated a slave and produced a son carrying this same Y chromosome, a slave who was later inherited by Thomas Jefferson. If so, that man (or those men) could also have produced children with Sally Hemings, who would pass on the same Y chromosome found in Eston’s descendant.83

  Peter and Samuel Carr

  It is now clear that neither Peter nor Samuel Carr fathered Eston Hemings or Thomas Woodson. But that is all the DNA tests can tell us. They say nothing about who fathered Harriet I, Beverly, Harriet II, “Thenia” (if Sally Hemings had such a daughter84), or Madison Hemings. It is only when one ignores the eyewitness testimony of Edmund Bacon, the various references to confessions by the Carr brothers, and the new DNA evidence about Thomas Woodson, that it is possible to conclude that Sally Hemings possibly could have had a monogamous sexual relationship with Thomas Jefferson. But the assumption of monogamy is so critical to the revisionist case that they have found it desirable to portray the DNA evidence as having ruled out the Carrs as possible fathers for any of Sally Hemings’ other children. That obviously is not true.

  Professor Ellis, for example, asserts that the DNA evidence “exposes the Carr explanation as a contrivance,”85 explaining: “The study shows no match between the Hemings line and the Carr family, thereby undermining the long-standing explanation offered by Jefferson’s white descendants (that is, that Peter Carr or Samuel Carr is the culprit) and endorsed by several prominent Jefferson scholars. … ”86 But this is factually in error. Unless Thomas Woodson was the son of Sally Hemings, the only member of the “Hemings line” tested was a descendant of Eston. As Dr. Foster has acknowledged,87 the DNA tests said absolutely nothing about the paternity of Sally’s other children.88

  In the same issue of the William & Mary Quarterly, Monticello’s Lucia Stanton writes:

  Now, because of the almost seismic effect of a scientific test, we will never again read the words of Jefferson and the members of his household in quite the same way. The core feature of the Jefferson family denial—that Peter Carr or Samuel Carr was the father of Hemings’s children—has been discredited by chromosomes and haplotypes. Have the accounts of Jefferson’s grandchildren Thomas Jefferson Randolph and Ellen Randolph Coolidge lost some of their credibility because, in this one area, they seem to have misrepresented the truth so materially?89

  Ms. Stanton relies upon this alleged evidence of misrepresentation to question the reliability of Ellen Coolidge’s descriptions of Jefferson’s religious and other views.90 This simply makes no sense. First, the Carrs remain viable suspects for the possible paternity of all of Sally Hemings’ other children. Second, even were that not true, Ellen Coolidge was apparently basing her statement upon accounts provided by her brother Jeff. Even if we assume that every word he said to her was a lie, that does not make her repetition of the story in good faith an act of dishonesty on her part so as to call into question her own veracity.91

  Randolph Jefferson and His Sons

  Professor Gordon-Reed suggests in Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings that the only explanation for the physical similarities between Thomas Jefferson and Sally’s children is either that one of the Carr brothers (sons of Jefferson’s sister) was their father or that it was Thomas Jefferson himself. She writes:

  It is important to keep in mind the relationship between the two competing theories as to who fathered Sally Hemings’s children. Members of the Jefferson family offered the Carr brothers as the likely fathers to explain why Sally Hemings’s four children looked so much like Thomas Jefferson. Eliminating the Carr brothers does not erase the children’s close resemblance to Jefferson. Some other as yet undesignated Jefferson relative must be substituted, or Thomas Jefferson remains the most likely father. In the absence of any contemporary source suggesting that another relative might have been the father or any present-day indication that it might have been someone else, such speculation seems a desperate attempt to absolve Jefferson at the cost of all reason.92

  Professor Gordon-Reed does not even appear to have known of the existence of Thomas Jefferson’s brother, Randolph, when she published her book in 1997. At least his name does not appear on her genealogical chart93 or in her index,94 and one hesitates to assume that she was intentionally trying to conceal his existence.95 A relatively minor figure of little historic interest beyond being related to our third President, Thomas Jefferson’s intellectually challenged96 younger brother Randolph is ignored by many Jefferson scholars and is referred to as the President’s “unknown brother” by the one scholar who has given him much attention.97

  When it was determined by DNA testing that Eston Hemings was probably fathered by a member of the Jefferson family, some Jefferson defenders suggested that one of the most likely suspects among the more than two dozen male Jeffersons in Virginia at the time was Randolph, who was born on October 1, 1755, and thus was nearly twelve years younger than the President. Randolph and his twin sister Anna Scott were the youngest of the ten children known to have been born to Peter Jefferson and Jane Randolph.98

  Professor Ellis (who makes no reference to Randolph in his own biography, American Sphinx, and reportedly admitted not knowing of Randolph’s existence until his name surfaced following report of the DNA evidence99) provides this assessment of the suggestion that Randolph, rather than Thomas, might have fathered Eston Hemings:

  To be sure, the DNA evidence establishes probability rather than certainty. A spirited rebuttal has been mounted by Jefferson genealogist Herbert Barger, suggesting that Randolph Jefferson or his son Isham (Jefferson’s brother and nephew, respectively) is a more likely candidate. No one had mentioned Randolph Jefferson as a possible alternative before the DNA study. He is being brought forward now because he fits the genetic profile. This belated claim strikes me as a kind of last stand for the most dedicated Jefferson loyalists. …Historians of the Lost Cause syndrome will recognize the p
oignant fusion of sincerity and futility at work here.100

  In a similar vein, the Monticello Report observed that “Randolph Jefferson and his sons are not known to have been at Monticello at the time of Eston Hemings’s conception, nor has anyone, until 1998, ever before publicly suggested them as possible fathers.”101 In an attached memorandum on “The Possible Paternity of Other Jeffersons,” the Monticello Report adds, “there are no known references (prior to the 1998 DNA results) to Randolph Jefferson as a possible father of Sally Hemings’ children,” and concludes without further explanation that Randolph’s paternity is “very unlikely. … ”102

  Prior Suggestions That Randolph Jefferson May Have Fathered Some of

  Sally’s Children

  It is true that most scholars who have addressed the Jefferson-Hemings story have not focused on Randolph Jefferson as the likely father of any of Sally’s children. In terms of historical interest, he was a very minor figure. Most Jefferson biographers mention him only in passing, if at all. Their only concern with respect to Sally Hemings and her children was presumably whether the Callender allegations were true. Finding the story implausible, they tended simply to accept the stories attributed to Jeff Randolph that the Carr brothers had confessed to paternity and moved on to other issues. Once they were convinced that the allegations against the President were false, the details of Sally Hemings’ life were of no greater interest to them than those of Randolph Jefferson’s life.